Asia in Focus 2A Nordic Journal on Asia by early career researchers

Asia in FocusA Nordic journal on Asia by early career researchers

Issue 2, 2015

The Asia in Focus journal is published online twice a year by NIAS - Nordic Institute of Asian Stud-ies. NIAS is a Nordic research and service institute focusing on Asia’s modern transformations. Asia in Fo-cus was initiated by NIAS to provide Master students and Ph.D. students affiliated to a Nordic institu-tion a widely accessible and transnational forum to publish their findings. The focal point of the journal is the modern Asian societies viewed from the standpoints of social science and humanities. The geo-graphical focus is the Asian countries from Central Asia to Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand.

Editorial Committee: Nicol Foulkes Savinetti (Managing Editor), NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian StudiesAndré Asplund, European Institute of Japanese StudiesInga-Lill Blomkvist, NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian StudiesNis Grünberg, Copenhagen Business School and Sino-Danish CenterRakel Haslund-Gjerrild, University of CopenhagenKitt Plinia Nielsen, University of CopenhagenEmmanuel Raju, University of CopenhagenSiddharth Sareen, University of CopenhagenMichael Alexander Ulfstjerne, University of Copenhagen,

While the editorial committee is responsible for the final selection of content for Asia in Focus, the responsibility for the opinions expressed and the accuracy of the facts published in articles rest solely with the authors.

Publisher: NIAS - Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Layout: Inga-Lill Blomkvist Front page: Design: Rakel Haslund-Gjerrild , Images: Arve Hansen, John Hennessey, Kees Krul, Sara Ellegaard Nielsen & Camilla Jane Standhart

Copyright: Authors & NIAS. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the writ-ten permission from the authors.

Journal website: www.asiainfocus.dk

Contact: asiainfocus@nias.ku.dkNIAS - Nordic Institute of Asian Studies / Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark www.nias.ku.dk

Contents

Letter from the Editor 1Nicol Foulkes Savinetti

Introduction 3Ravinder Kaur

Motorbike Madness? Development and Two-Wheeled Mobility in Hanoi 5Arve Hansen

Creating a Colonial Consciousness? Reflections on Audience Reception at the Tokyo Colonization Exposition of 1912 15John Hennessey

Preserving Bang Krachao’s Green Space through Agriculture 25 Kees Krul

Agenda or Accident? Unraveling the 2014 Mass Exodus of Cambodian Migrant Workers from Thailand 35Erich Molz

Myanmar Activists in the Making. Navigating in a Changing Political Landscape 45Sara Ellegaard Nielsen & Camilla Jane Standhart

1 Asia In Focus

Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader

When Asia in Focus was first established, it was a time of increasing awareness of and engagement with Asia, both inside and outside of academia. At that time, I was a guest researcher at NIAS and in close proximity to the great minds who came up with the initial concept (Rakel Haslund-Gjerrild and Inga-Lill Blomkvist). I thus had the pleasure of being part of this start-up from the very beginning. I am so excited about the initiative for several reasons, some of which I would like to share.

My own academic path led me from the study of Europe, to the study of the Nordic region, and in the later years to the study of Asia, but the history, diversity and the cultural wealth of the region has fascinated me since childhood. It is a pleasure to be able to read and engage with such a diverse group of captivating writings about social, political and cultural phenomena in Asia. I am now curious to see how the intra-action between the three regions will pan out, and I regard myself as somewhat privileged to be able to view this interconnectedness through the work of early career scholars, as well as through the comments and feedback from more established academics.

Perhaps the part I appreciate most about the journal is that it targets early career scholars. By provid-ing not only a forum for publishing, but also a learning environment for authors, the journal is a valuable source of education. Our editors take great care to give guiding feedback which thus far has been highly valued by authors who have submitted papers.

Working on the journal has also been a learning process for us in the Editorial Team. In the first is-sue, we were focused on building up the team and establishing the ‘brand’ so to speak. During the course of the second issue, we focused on streamlining the editorial process. We introduced blind reviewing, and we have greatly expanded our network of external reviewers. We have also paid closer attention to smaller details in order to achieve a more polished final product.

Asia in Focus is based on voluntary work and two issues per year is as much as we can manage. In the future however, we would like to extend an invitation to external editors to edit a special issue based on a particular theme. This could be papers from a conference, a project, or a group of scholars interested in the same issue. We want to maintain some level of flexibility and allow for creative thinking outside of the academic box, so get in touch if you have an idea.

To conclude, I would like to relay how happy we have been for the very positive response to the journal from the academic community in the Nordic region and abroad. It is tough to be visible in the information society of today and especially so in academia. While we appreciate being able to use NIAS’ networks, we ask that you help us spread the word even further so that the knowledge we are sharing reaches climes near and far and, importantly, both inside and outside of academia.   Kind regards

Nicol Foulkes Savinetti Managing Editor

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Introduction

Asia is at the heart of an increasingly interconnected world. The most populous and the largest of conti-nents, it has long been the busy global crossroad where centuries of migratory flows of people, ideas, com-modities and fashions have enriched diverse cultures, syncretic traditions and booming economic trade. As connections between Asia and the world grow at an unprecedented speed and scale, it becomes ever more urgent to make sense of the complexity and diversity that underpins its spectacular political-eco-nomic emergence in the early twenty-first century. The current moment, sometimes euphorically called ‘the Asian century’, has been amply written and analyzed in breathless, sweeping popular accounts. Yet what is required to understand this transformative moment, in Asia as well as far beyond its borders, is critical engagement that allows us to ground the contemporary within the longue duree of history.

Asia in Focus is precisely such a timely scholarly project that draws our attention to the event and the ordinary that constitute everyday life in Asia. What marks out this journal from a number of other scholarly journals is that it offers exclusive and generous space to early career researchers to present their work. In its second volume, the journal brings together a rich collection of essays that showcase the ex-citing research that the early career scholars are engaged in. John Hennessey’s essay ‘Creating a Colonial Consciousness’ delves into the theme of industrial expositions at the turn of the last century that became powerful forms of mass mediation. The expositions were deployed to signal technological advancements, and to mobilize and accumulate political and financial capital that followed these. Though Hennessey takes the 1912 Tokyo exposition to explore the audience reactions, the theme echoes the contemporary mediations of commodified nations, or ‘emerging markets’, in the global publicity through spectacular displays and campaigns a century later.

A second theme in the volume is that of urban transformations. Here Kees Krul’s ‘Preserving Bang Krachao’s Green Space through Agriculture’ and Arve Hansen’s ‘Motorbike Madness’ presents accounts of everyday negotiations around environmentalism, pollution, economic growth and chaotic traffic in two bustling urban locations of Bangkok and Hanoi. The last two articles draw our attention to the political mobilizations and violent contentions that have come to surface in the recent past. Sara Ellegaard Nielsen and Camilla Jane Standhart in their article ‘Myanmar activists in the Making’ describe the emergence of youth activist movements in Myanmar at a moment when the military Junta makes way for a demo-cratically elected government.  Erich Molz’s ‘Accident or Agenda’ picks up a different thread of the same problematic, namely, the state strategies improvised by the military junta in Thailand to consolidate its internal power and external reputation. Molz shows how the Cambodian migrant workers employed in shadow economies became pawns in this game as the military state’s anti-human trafficking crackdown was more geared to weaken the rival police force.

What the articles collectively offer are empirically rich and grounded accounts of transformations that continue to reshape Asia today. More than anything, this new critical scholarship seeks to disclose the nuts and bolts, the apparatus of everyday life, the contentions and contradictions that constitute a part of the world that still remains the bustling global crossroad.

Ravinder Kaur, PhD Associate Professor of South Asian Studies Director of the Centre of Global South Asian Studies Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

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5 Asia In Focus

There is nothing quite like the buzzing and honking of four million motor-bikes. This is why a visit to Hanoi can be so overwhelming for first-timers,

and why visitors have often described the particu-larities of Hanoi’s streetscapes as ‘motorbike mad-ness’ (something that is revealed by a quick google search). Not long ago the scene looked very dif-ferent. It used to be bicycles that dominated the streets of the Vietnamese capital. Photographs and descriptions of Hanoi from as late as the early 1990s describe a level of tranquillity in the streets that is almost unimaginable today. How did it change into the inferno of honking and traffic jams of contemporary Hanoi?

The story of the motorbike in Vietnam is a fascinating one, and one that tells us a great deal about Vietnam’s development process. From being a luxury product as late as the 1990s, the motor-bike is now found in practically every Vietnamese household. It is also the essence of Vietnamese ur-ban life and has together with its non-motorised predecessor shaped urban geography. In Hanoi everything can be done on a motorbike. It is used for shopping, as a taxi (xe om, literally translates as

‘hugging vehicle’), for resting or sleeping (particu-larly by the xe om drivers), for going on dates or hanging out with friends, for walking the dog, for carrying obscene amounts of goods, and for bring-ing children to and from school. It is what keeps Hanoi going, the blood running through Hanoi’s veins, keeping the city alive. According to World Bank (2011) estimates, it is also the main reason why mobility is in fact still reasonably good in Ha-noi with short commuting times in comparison to other large Asian cities.

This paper explores the ‘motorbike revolu-tion’ in Vietnam from a consumption perspective, approaching motorbikes both from the macro-lev-el changes in political economy following econom-ic reforms, and from the streets of Hanoi. First and foremost, the paper sets out to explain how the motorised two-wheeler attained its dominant position, and how this has depended on social and economic changes following economic reforms. Furthermore, the paper considers the changing symbolic value of motorbikes, as well as their unique use value in the context of Hanoi’s physical and commercial infrastructure.

Motorbike Madness? Development and Two-Wheeled Mobility in Hanoi

Arve Hansen

Four million motorbikes navigate the narrow streets of Hanoi, having close to completely replaced the bicycle as a means of transport. This paper approaches the ‘motorbike revolution’ in Vietnam in general and Hanoi in particular at the intersection between political economy and everyday practices. It discusses how regional economic integration following the market reforms known as doi moi has facilitated the surge in motorbike ownership, as well as how this has materialised through everyday mobility practices in Hanoi. The paper argues that, given a context of lacking transport alternatives, the motorbike must be understood through its unique use value. Furthermore, the motorbike can be considered the main reason that the streets of Hanoi are not in a perpetual state of gridlock. Thus, the paper argues that while the high number of motorbikes brings along many challenges, the situation would deteriorate significantly if the millions of motorbikes are to be replaced by their emerging competitor, the private automobile.

Keywords: Motorbikes, Hanoi, mobility, consumption, doi moi, development, Vietnam,

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Development, consumption, mobility The theoretical starting point for this paper is a broad approach to consumption as a distinct way to understand human relations to material goods. Goods can be used to communicate identity, class and belonging, but they also have their own ma-terial stories to tell and their own material agency (see e.g. Sahakian and Wilhite, 2014), and they play a crucial role in the performance of everyday practices.

Consumption, or ‘the acquisition and use of things’ (Wilhite, 2008, p. 3), has been subject to significant scholarly attention in recent decades. The field has seen an eclectic range of approaches to understanding consumption, ranging from the rational consumer of mainstream economics and the post-modernist emphasis on cultural expres-sivism and signs, to the present revival of practice theory (see Warde 2014 for further discussion).

The academic inquiry of consumption has traditionally seen a production – consumption divide, with one branch of research emphasising production, provision and the material, and the other focusing on the consumer, culture and the symbolic (see e.g. Slater, 1997 or Fine, 2002 for detailed discussions). This paper is influenced by practice approaches’ understanding of consump-tion as embedded in the social life of people and goods, as well as Ben Fine’s (2002) insistence that production and ‘systems of provision’ must be in-cluded in order to fully understand consumption. In a context of rapid development, this paper ar-gues, consumption is best understood in relation to economic development processes as well as how these processes materialise in everyday life.

Focusing on the consumption of means of transport, another theoretical starting point of this paper is mobilities research. With what has been labelled the ‘mobilities turn’ of the social sciences (Sheller and Urry, 2006), the processes and meanings of movement of goods and peo-ple have received much recent scholarly attention (see Cresswell, 2010, 2012, 2014 for thorough overviews). Cars and the ‘system of automobility’

(Urry, 2004) have been at the centre of attention in the mobilities literature (see Butler and Han-nam, 2014 for an overview), while motorbikes to a significant extent have been ignored (Pinch and Reimer, 2012). An aim of this paper is to take mobility research out of the car-dominated mobility systems of mature capitalist countries to the many particularities of the streetscapes of a rapidly developing country. In contemporary Hanoi, motorbikes are the dominant means of transport rather than ‘alternative mobilities’ in an overall system of automobility. As is discussed below, what I term a system of ‘moto-mobility’ has materialised in Vietnam’s capital, with urban and commercial geography having developed in a dialectical relationship with two-wheelers.

Motorbike ethnographyThe paper draws on fieldwork in Hanoi over a period of seven months in 2012 and 2013. The findings are based on observation as well as semi-structured interviews with car owners and motorbike owners ranging from the age of 21 to 70, all belonging broadly speaking to the new Vi-etnamese ‘middle class’ (see Gainsborough 2010), in addition to interviews with representatives of motorbike manufacturers. Furthermore, the re-search has been based on ‘mobile methods’ (see e.g. Büscher, Urry and Witchger, 2011). I used a motorbike for practically all fieldwork purposes: to get around, drive to interviews, explore the city and observe traffic, go to restaurants and cafes, shop, and visit friends. This has played a signifi-cant role in shaping my understanding of the city, and in grasping the importance of the motorbike in the everyday life of Hanoi and its inhabitants (see Gillen, 2015 for a discussion on using motor-bikes for fieldwork in Vietnam).

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The motorbike revolutionNot long ago, the motorbike was a luxury good in Vietnam, and particularly so in the North of the country that had been subject to a longer pe-riod of socialist planning than the South. Before the market reforms known as doi moi (‘renova-tion’) were initiated in 1986 (see Masina, 2006; Hansen, 2015a), even a bicycle was a treasured good. The few available motorbikes in Hanoi mostly came from the Soviet Union, such as the famous Babetta and Minsk brands (still iconic for aficionados, but now either obsolete or banned from the streets of Hanoi). After reunification in 1975, a few Hanoians were able to get their hands on Japanese and European motorbikes (such as the popular Italian scooters) from the South, but it was doi moi that set the stage for the motorbike revolution.

When the Vietnamese government launched an import substitution policy for motorcycle manufacturing in the mid-1990s, the Japanese giants Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki, as well as San-yang from Taiwan started establishing businesses in the country in order to get around import quo-tas. Honda dominated the market in this period, although most of the models were still imported from the company’s production in Thailand (Fu-jita 2013a).

These changes made motorbikes much more accessible, something that was visible in the streets of Vietnam’s capital where local authori-ties were unable to keep up with the provision of public transport to fulfil the transport needs of an increasingly mobile and rapidly growing urban population. The motorbike was then the perfect substitute for the bicycle: similar to it in many ways, almost as easy to operate but a whole lot faster. It allowed Hanoians to carry out the same practices and access the same places as the bicycle, at the same time covering larger distances without having to break sweat. As Truitt (2008, p. 5) puts it, ‘Unlike bicycles, motorbikes promise effortless mobility or, rather, mobility that relies on fossil fuel rather than human exertion’.

Still, however, owning a motorbike was not for everyone; the total of motorbikes nationwide reached about 6 million by 1999 (MONRE, 2007). The turn of the millennium was when sales started really taking off, and annual sales in-creased from 0.5 million in 1999 to 1.7 million in 2000 (Hansen, in press). The most important reason behind this year-to-year increase was Chi-na. With a good appetite for motorbikes already established but prices still too high for the aver-age consumer, the stage was set for what Fujita (2013a) terms the ‘China shock’. This consisted of cheap Chinese copies of Japanese motorbike models making their way across the border, of-ten circumventing import laws by being import-ed as so-called knockdown kits and assembled in Vietnam by local entrepreneurs. The quality of these motorbikes was – and still is – compara-tively low, but prices were much lower than for the Japanese competitors. This was an important step towards ‘democratizing’ motorbike owner-ship, but importantly also had the effect of forc-ing other firms to change strategy. Honda started producing models in Vietnam specialized for the Vietnamese market and were in this way able to compete with the Chinese copies. Fujita (2013a) reports that Honda experienced a shocking drop from 67 percent market share in 1998 to 12 per-cent in 2001, but that the Japanese giant still was able to reclaim the market after this and again become the dominant player. Chinese models have in turn been relegated to the Vietnamese countryside where they still make up a significant proportion of the market share (Fujita, 2013b).

Combined with rising incomes, this formal and informal integration into regional produc-tion networks contributed towards normalising motorbike ownership. By 2011 there was more than one motorbike by household nationwide in Vietnam (GSO 2012), and 2.4 motorbikes per household in Hanoi (EPS, 2014). Along with the rapid increase in ownership, the social meanings attached to motorbikes have also changed.

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Between distinction and mundane mo-bilitiesThe social and economic transformations of doi moi involved a crucial legitimisation of pri-vate consumption and display of wealth (Vann, 2012). In this context, motorbikes became a powerful status object and a symbol of the new Vietnam (Truitt, 2008). With two-wheeled mo-bility ‘democratised’, the status once attached to owning a two-wheeler started to diminish and the role of motorbikes as vehicles for social distinction took a new turn. While the ultimate competitor in form of the private automobile started entering the stage, the combination of high tax levels and an urban geography badly suited for automobil-ity (Hansen, in press) paved the way for an old favourite in the shape of the Italian scooter.

The size of the market for ‘luxury’ motor-bikes in Vietnam is considered to be extraordinary compared to other countries with a high preva-lence of motorbikes; at a certain income level, cars have replaced motorbikes to a much larger extent than in Vietnam. This made the famous Italian manufacturer Piaggio decide to use Vietnam as its base for producing its different Piaggio and Vespa models (Interview, representative of Piaggio Viet-nam, November 2013). At several times the price of its competitors, Piaggio did not aim to com-pete on price. In addition, with Japanese models generally considered as reliable and of very high quality, durability or technology would not nec-essarily have led to success in a competitive mar-ket. Instead, in the words of Wunker (2011, np.), Piaggio ‘competed asymmetrically’ and developed a market for premium scooters. As expressed by a representative of Piaggio Vietnam, the typical buyer of their product is looking for something ‘very stylish’, something ‘to define themselves, or express themselves’ (Interview, November 2013). While Honda Vietnam have followed up and de-veloped their own premium brands, nothing on two wheels so far seems able to compete with the status of an Italian motorbike.

However, while symbolic value and status

may be central aspects of consumption, it is im-portant to remember that most consumption takes place as part of everyday practices, as ‘ordi-nary consumption’ in the words of Gronow and Warde (2001). Transport is first and foremost a means of getting from A to B, and the explicit use value of the motorbike as well as the lack of alternative means of transportation are probably the best explanations for its popularity.

In his celebration of the motorbike in Viet-nam, Vietnamese novelist Nguyen Truong Quy (2014) speaks of the symbolism of the motor-bike and how it can be associated with freedom. His most important point, however, is how this contrasts with the role of the motorbike for most Vietnamese. As he asks, “Among the crowds of motorbike riders, often frantic, often flaunting [sic] the laws of traffic and the code of civilized conduct, dragged into a chronic fatigue day after day, month after month, on their ordinary com-muter’s motorbike: how many of these people think of the two wheels beneath them as a source of inspiration?” (Quy 2014, p. 35).

This is a crucial point. Arguably, the main reason for Hanoians to drive a motorbike is that they do not feel they have a choice. This was also reflected by informants in Hanoi. As argued by a young, female motorbike owner: ‘It’s my only choice, right. I cannot walk around Hanoi, I cannot drive a car, I don’t have one and I can’t, so yeah, motorbike is like the only choice’ (In-terview, November 2013). This can be seen as a form of consumer lock-in. Although it is cer-tainly possible to survive in Hanoi without a mo-torised vehicle, it makes participating in the dy-namics and flows of contemporary society much harder. Through the combination of overall pro-cesses of economic development, urban transport provision and everyday practices of mobility, the motorbike has become an essential commodity in contemporary Hanoi.

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Development, consumption and mobil-ity in HanoiSymbolic value and use value are of course not mutually exclusive categories. The motorbike can be used mainly for transport while displaying class, status or urban cool. The young motorbike owner who felt locked in to the system of mo-to-mobility herself drove what could be consid-ered a premium scooter. The point here is that status or symbolic value alone cannot explain the motorbike revolution.

The role of the motorbikes in Hanoi today would be impossible without the market reforms of doi moi. The reforms opened up the Vietnamese economy to global and regional trade networks. This allowed motorbikes to enter the streets and simultaneously legitimised private consumption. As this paper has shown, however, the economic processes that allowed for the motorbike revolu-tion were more complicated than simply a case for increased economic openness would suggest. Indeed, Vietnam protected its borders against im-ports, and the rather unplanned development of the China shock was vital for making motorbikes available to large parts of the population.

Still, economic determinism cannot give us the full picture as other regions of the world have never come close to the levels of motor-bike ownership seen in Vietnam. Moto-mobility as the dominant means of transport is an Asian phenomenon, evident from figures showing how 84 per cent of the world motorbike demand is expected to come from the Asia/Pacific region in 2016 (Freedonia, 2013). It is quite obvious that other Asian countries, such as Japan, Tai-wan, China, and Thailand, have been vital to the specific developments in Vietnam, both through trade and production and as examples of motor-bike-driven societies.

Crucially, ‘[t]he effect of production on consumption is mediated through the nexus of practices’ (Warde, 2005, p. 141). The important role of bicycles at earlier ‘stages of development’ has played an important role for the subsequent

popularity of motorbikes. The earlier prevalence of vélomobility firmly established two-wheeled practices, shaping and being shaped by urban infrastructure. In Hanoi, this development con-tinued and was strengthened by motorbikes (Hansen, 2015b). Urry (2004, p. 27) has famous-ly conceptualised automobility as a ‘self-organiz-ing autopoietic, non-linear system’. I argue the same can be said about ‘the system of moto-mo-bility’ that is in place in Hanoi. Once motorbikes started replacing bicycles, motorbikes and the two-wheeled geography and infrastructure of mo-bility and consumption in Hanoi have developed dialectically, reinforcing each other (Hansen, 2015b). While I argue the use value of motor-bikes within this system, including a significant degree of lock-in, is the most important factor in explaining the popularity of two-wheeled mobili-ty, motorbikes are simultaneously subject to often complex processes of distinction and changing symbolic value. This in turn has changed with in-creasing affluence. In a context where motorbikes represented a scarce commodity, just being on two wheels could be enough to gain social status. When owning a motorbike is close to completely normalised, distinction requires new versions of motorbikes, something that contemporary capi-talism has proved extremely efficient at providing.

Economic reforms, regional economic in-tegration, two-wheeled practices and the system of moto-mobility have thus shaped Hanoi into a city of motorbikes. The motorised two-wheeler is integral to close to all aspects of everyday life in the Vietnamese capital. But systems can be bro-ken, and Hanoi has in recent years experienced a surge in car ownership. While still far fewer in numbers than motorbikes, the number of cars is increasing much faster, indeed as much as 222 percent between 2005 and 2011 according to the World Bank (EPS, 2014). While very expensive to acquire and use, and less convenient for driv-ing in the narrow streets, cars provide safer, clean-er, more comfortable and even healthier mobility in the polluted Hanoi air. They also now repre-

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sent perhaps the main aspirational good for the middle class. This in turn is visible in new devel-opments in the traditional fringes of the capital, where so-called New Urban Areas are constructed with an embedded expectation of a future system of automobility (Hansen, 2015b). Thus, while the two-wheeled icon of Vietnam continues to dominate the streets of Hanoi, it remains to be seen how long this will last.

Concluding remarks: A future on two or four wheels?The remarkable increase in motorbike ownership in Vietnam today can be understood from a con-sumption perspective accounting for changes in the provision of goods as well as its relationship to everyday practices. This paper has argued that formal (Japan, Taiwan) and informal (China) economic integration has played a crucial role in the motorbike revolution, in particular the ‘Chi-na shock’ made motorbikes gradually become available to ‘everyone’. In addition, Vietnam was previously dominated by bicycles, and the mo-torbike has effectively replaced its non-motorised predecessor as a similar but faster and more con-venient technology. There can still be a significant amount of status attached to some models of mo-torbikes, but the motorbike is now facing tough competition from private cars. It is still, as Truitt (2008) has argued, in traffic that you see the new middle class in Vietnam. For Truitt this refers to the owners of motorbikes, and you can arguably still spot the middle class by the type of motor-bikes they drive. Increasingly, however, the mid-dle class is now to be found within the confines of a private automobile (although, interestingly, very few car owners seem to get rid of their mo-torbikes, see Hansen, 2015b).

The millions of motorbikes certainly bring a certain feeling of chaos to the streets of Hanoi. The system of moto-mobility does have its log-ic, however, and actually works fairly well. If you are a motorist, that is. Large parts of Hanoi today

are a nightmare for pedestrians. The motorbike must take part of the blame for this, and it also plays a central role in giving Vietnam among the highest number of traffic casualties in the world (Short and Pinet-Peralta 2010). Nevertheless, the biggest threat to mobility in Hanoi today is the surge in private car ownership (Hansen, in press). Meanwhile, motorbike companies are worrying about stagnating sales, and there is much talk of a saturated motorbike market (e.g. Thanh Nien News 2014). The private car is finally the new king in town, also in Hanoi, although it fits badly into Hanoi’s ‘moto-mobile’ geography (Hansen, 2015; Hansen, in press). The motorbike is here to stay for now, but the chaos of Hanoi traffic may just get worse as the two-wheeler has to com-pete for scarce road space with its four-wheeled big brother. Unfortunately for the aspirations of many Hanoians today, if the four million motor-bikes are to be replaced by cars, an image of the future of Hanoi could quite possibly be seen in the almost completely gridlocked streets of Ma-nila, Jakarta and Bangkok.

Arve HAnsen is a PhD candidate in Human Ge-ography and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the Uni-versity of Oslo. His primary areas of interest are consumption, development and mobility, and the interplay of these, particularly in Vietnam. Email arve.hansen@sum.uio.no

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Slater, D. (1997). Consumer culture and modernity. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Thanh Nien News (2014a). Vietnam motorbike market slump to continue. Retrieved from http://www.thanhniennews.com/business/vietnam-motorbike-market-slump-to-continue-23874.html

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Wunker, S. (2011) How the Vespa became Vietnamese. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2011/11/08/how-the-vespa-became-vietnamese/

15 Asia In Focus

It was in this manner that Fukuzawa Yukichi described the phenomenon of the interna-tional exposition in his 1866 bestseller Things Western [Seiyō jijō], which spread basic infor-

mation about the West to a wide audience in Japan. Fukuzawa himself was among the first Japanese to visit such an exposition, the second London Inter-national Exposition of 1862, a visit which made quite an impression on him (National Diet Li-brary, 2011). Expositions were indeed a central institution in the West for trading knowledge and projecting power during this period. As many scholars have recognized, international expositions were closely linked with colonialism and represent-

ed a significant venue for disseminating discours-es of empire (for example, MacKenzie, 1984; Oh, 2008; Hotta-Lister & Nish, 2013; Matsuda, 2003; Yamaji, 2008).

Japanese leaders were quick to see the im-portance of expositions and committed significant resources to participating in world’s fairs from ear-ly on. They also quickly adapted the genre to do-mestic ends, holding industrial trade fairs on an increasingly grand scale in Japan. As Noriko Aso has argued, expositions became part of a Meiji “ex-hibitionary complex” aimed at public education in the regime’s program of industrialization and “civi-lization” (Aso, 2014, p. 16). Consistent with

Creating a Colonial Consciousness? Reflections on Audience Reception at the Tokyo Colonization

Exposition of 1912

John Hennessey

It is well-recognized in historical scholarship that in both Japan and the West, expositions were an important site for the dissemination of colonial propaganda in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the question of how colonial themes were perceived and understood by visitors to these events remains largely unanswered in this literature. Through an examination of the Colonization Exposition [Takushoku hakurankai] that was held in Tokyo in 1912, this essay reflects on the question of audience reception, or how media texts both influence and are interpreted by their consumers. Using a previously unexamined contemporary magazine article that describes visitor reactions, it argues that the messages that the organizers of this exposition intended to send were interpreted in diverse ways by the viewing public, ranging from acceptance to rejection. The discussion centers on notions of dignified public education, human exhibits and the methodological difficulties involved in determining media reception from historical documents.

Keywords: Takushoku hakurankai, expositions, Japanese colonialism, reception, popular imperialism, historical methodology

‘... in large cities in the West a convention of products is held once every few years, which is announced to the world, and specialty products, useful machines, antiques and rare items from every nation are gathered to show to people from around the world. This is called an exposition [hakurankai]...’

Fukuzawa, 1866, p. 97-99; “Yukichi Fukuzawa Goes to the Expo,” 2010

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trends in the West and Japanese leaders’ desire to demonstrate their country’s power and influence, colonialism became a central theme in Japan’s emerging exhibitionary complex shortly after Ja-pan began its overseas expansion. From as early as 1903, expositions in Japan were used to educate the Japanese public and instill feelings of pride about their country’s budding empire.

This essay focuses on a particularly salient example of this colonial exhibitionary trend: the Colonization Exposition [Takushoku hakurankai] that took place in Tokyo’s Ueno Park in Octo-ber and November 1912. Although Japan’s first official “colony”, Taiwan, had been presented to a broad Japanese public at a 1903 industrial fair in Osaka (Matsuda, 2003), the Colonization Ex-position arguably represented the first large-scale attempt to systematically introduce the Japanese metropolitan public to their country’s coloni-al empire through an exposition, and included exhibits from Japan’s then numerous colonized territories (Yamaji, 2004, p. 25-26). In terms of its size and timing, this exposition is of particular historical interest as it took place after Japan had acquired most of its colonial empire, but shortly before the First World War began to shake the foundations of the nineteenth-century world or-der and before Japan began to make its rhetori-cal turn from Western colonial discourse to pan-Asian “co-prosperity”.

Audience Reception: A Methodological ChallengeSurprisingly, given the abundant literature on colonial propaganda at expositions in the West and Japanese expositions in general, the Tokyo Colonization Exposition has only received de-tailed attention in one study by Matsuda Kyōko (Matsuda, 2013). Matsuda provides a compelling critical analysis of the presentation and contents of this exposition, but like most other research on colonial expositions, her text leaves the ques-tion of how colonial messages might have been

received by spectators largely unanswered. In a 2004 article, Yamaji Katsuhiko briefly considers the presentation of various colonialized peoples from around the Japanese Empire at this expo-sition in comparison with “human exhibits” at other Japanese fairs in subsequent decades. He unproblematically assumes that the exoticized images of colonized peoples presented at the dif-ferent fairs “permeated the heads of the [Japanese] general public” (Yamaji, 2004, p. 30).

While crucial to understanding the role of expositions in propagating imperial mindsets, the question of audience reception, or how exposure to various media affects people’s attitudes and ways of thinking, is difficult to answer in a satisfying way. Media studies scholars and some discourse analysts have strongly contested the notion that ideological media wield direct control over pub-lic opinion, arguing that audience members are more than merely passive recipients of informa-tion (Fairclough, 1995; Staiger, 2005; Schrøder, 2007). They convincingly argue that audience members react to the information they receive individually and have the possibility to interpret the text in various ways ranging from acceptance to indifference to resistance. Interpretations that differ from the author’s intentions can also be the result of conscious or unconscious misreadings. As a result, in the words of media discourse ana-lyst Kim Christian Schrøder, analyses of the “en-coding” or production of texts and of the texts themselves should be supplemented with research on how texts are “decoded” or consumed in or-der to arrive at a “holistic” understanding of the socially-situated meaning of the texts (Schrøder 2007, p. 84). In other words, the production, content and consumption of a media text must all be considered in order to arrive at a complete understanding of the meaning and effect of the text, but most scholarship only focuses on the first two of these dimensions, omitting the crucial component of audience reception.

This tendency is especially strong in the field of history, where scholars are often faced

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with overwhelming methodological difficulties in accurately assessing audience reception. Me-dia studies scholars rely heavily on interviews and questionnaires in their study of present-day tex-tual production and consumption, whereas histo-rians’ data is often limited to the text itself since its authors and audiences are typically either dead or interacted with the text so long ago that they are unreliable as sources. Historians often have no choice but to use indirect evidence to make ed-ucated guesses about audience reception, an ap-proach that can lead to widely varying interpreta-tions. A case in point is a heated debate between Jon M. MacKenzie and Bernard Porter over the imperial awareness of the population of 19th and 20th century Great Britain. Studying imperial propaganda and popular culture products in a wide variety of media forms, MacKenzie argues that the sheer volume of imperially-themed mass cultural products in pre-World War II Britain is evidence of a widespread interest in and enthusi-asm for the British Empire (MacKenzie 1986, p. 12). Porter, on the other hand, contends that this is an unfounded assumption since there is little evidence that such products were consumed as their authors intended (or indeed at all) and that only the upper crust of British society could have had any detailed knowledge of or interest in the Empire (Porter 2004). Needless to say, these two interpretations of available source material have wide-ranging implications for any assessment of collective responsibility for the wrongs of British imperialism.

Recognizing the methodological limitations inherent in all studies of historical audience re-ception, this short essay nonetheless aims to sup-plement existing research on the production and content of the 1912 Tokyo Colonization Exposi-tion with fortuitously surviving source material that can to some extent further our knowledge of how its exhibits were perceived by visitors. Arguing that responses were not uniform, I re-flect on how Japanese visitors to the Coloniza-tion Exposition may have ignored, subverted, or

subconsciously accepted the exhibits’ depiction of Japanese colonialism. Guiding my study is a previously unexamined contemporary account of visitor behavior at the exhibition that appeared in a magazine article from the colonial publication Chōsen oyobi manshū [Korea and Manchuria]. This Seoul-based, Japanese-language magazine was un-usual for its anti-establishment, pro-democratic character, quickly becoming “the platform of rad-ical settler politics” (Uchida, 2011, p. 130). The article, written by an anonymous author, not only gives extensive treatment of the exposition’s Korea exhibits, but also presents a rare account of visitor reactions and a critical appraisal of the venue that provide tantalizing clues about audience reception (Tokumei-shi [“Mr. Anonymous”], 1912), while simultaneously providing a useful background for considering the methodological limitations of his-torical media reception studies.

The Goals and Content of the ExpositionBefore considering audience reception, however, it is first important to briefly present the exposition’s organization, goals, and presentation. The presi-dent of the exposition committee was Kabayama Sukenori, former governor general of Taiwan (Tak-ushoku Hakurankai Zanmu Toriatsukaijo, 1913, p. 2). Other members included the civil governor of Taiwan and high administrators from Korea, Karafuto, Hokkaidō, and the Kwantung Leased Territory, as well as bureaucrats from the Colonial Office [Takushokukyoku] (Matsuda, 2013, p. 126). The exposition leadership also included Tokyo Im-perial University anthropologist Tsuboi Shōgorō, who had previously arranged colonial human ex-hibits at the 1903 Osaka expo (Matsuda, 2003, chap. 5; Yamaji, 2004). The Colonization Ex-position was technically privately organized, but through these figures it had strong ties to the state and the official colonial establishment (Matsuda, 2013, p. 126).

The Official Report explicitly reveals the event’s propagandistic nature in its presentation of

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the exposition’s aims. After asserting the impor-tance of a colonial empire to a country’s future, the report laid out the twin goals of the expo: to generate interest for colonial products among metropolitan consumers and, more important-ly, to create a sort of “colonial mindset” [shoku-min shisō] among the populace, so that the great work of the empire would find support among the people at large (Takushoku Hakurankai Zan-mu Toriatsukaijo, 1913, pp. 1, 4-5). The authors complained of widespread ignorance of and apa-thy towards colonial matters among the Japanese populace that they hoped to counteract through educational venues like the exposition (Takush-oku Hakurankai Zanmu Toriatsukaijo, 1913, p.

4). The exhibits at the Colonization Exposition

consisted primarily of maps, models, colonial products and photos of development projects. A central theme was the vastness of Japan’s empire, which was emphasized by frequent references to the range of climates that the empire boasted, from the chilling tundra of Karafuto to the Tai-wanese tropics. Another leitmotiv was the diver-sity of the “races” under Japanese tutelage, pre-sented through models and human zoos. Aspects of the Japanese “civilizing mission” like modern hospitals were also on display, as were traditional Korean crafts and samples of colonial raw materi-als (Tokumei-shi, 1912).

Figure 1: A contemporary illustration of the Colonization Exposition and its exhibits. Source: Takushoku hakurankai. (1912, November 5). Fūzoku gahō, 430. Tokyo: Tōyōdō, 13-14. Image courtesy of Waseda University Library.

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Subverting Imperial DignityThe exposition genre has typically been charac-terized by a conflict of interests between govern-ments’ desire for dignified public education and pressures to turn expos into commercial specta-cles. In the case of Japan at world’s fairs in the West, this struggle usually took the form of Japa-nese officials trying to stamp out “unauthorized” representations of their country that were not considered sufficiently serious (Lockyer, 2000, p. 13-26). Japanese leaders evidently felt that citi-zens should appreciate the gravity of the Empire, an imperium that was (mostly) won through the sacrifices of soldiers during the Sino- and Rus-so-Japanese Wars and should be seen as a source of power, wealth and pride. How well did the organizers of the Colonization Exposition suc-ceed in creating a dignified atmosphere of public education that would inculcate an imperial con-sciousness in the viewing public?

Seen from a quantitative perspective, the ex-position was a resounding success. Lasting only two months, it attracted some 800,000 visitors, far exceeding the organizers’ expectations. Emer-gency measures were taken to accommodate the crowds that swamped the exposition gates shortly after the fair opened (Matsuda 2013, pp. 134-135). Upon closer inspection, however, it is un-clear whether visitors had the kind of educational experience the organizers intended. The Chōsen oyobi manshū article repeatedly emphasizes the ex-treme congestion within the exposition hall. Vis-itors had no control over the speed at which they progressed past the exhibits. The author colorful-ly compares the experience to being inside a drag-on dance costume slowly snaking around the hall (Tokumei-shi, 1912, p. 50-52). In this claustro-phobic environment, it must have been difficult to properly view and understand the exhibits, and any aura of imperial dignity the organizers hoped to create was undoubtedly compromised.

It is also unclear whether it was actually the colonial exhibits that attracted the crowds, rais-ing the question of whether the exposition’s high

attendance figures can be taken as a measure of popular enthusiasm for imperialism. Like near-ly all expositions of the period, the Colonization Exposition had both “serious” exhibits and large-ly unrelated entertainment such as sideshows and food vendors. This blended character has caused many difficulties for scholars trying to gauge popular interest in imperialism (see for exam-ple Porter, 2004). To what extent were imperial themes actually conveyed at these expositions, when they apparently competed with popular entertainment? Again, the Chōsen oyobi manshū article offers some clues. According to the author, the many school groups that attended the ex-position were primarily interested in education-al exhibits such as calligraphy and Korean-style clothes sewn by students at Korean girls’ schools (Tokumei-shi, 1912, p. 52-53). Perhaps the or-ganizers of the exposition had already discovered the still-popular technique of attracting visitors to events to see their own or their children’s work on display, but on the other hand, such exhibits may well have drawn attention away from others with more overtly imperial themes. It is difficult to say whether the commercial attractions at colonial expositions such as this one primarily distracted attention from the official exhibits or lured in vis-itors who would otherwise never have been ex-posed to the colonial displays.

In any case, the article’s reportage strongly suggests that many visitors did not see the expo-sition in the dignified light the organizers intend-ed. For one thing, it treats the exposition more like a carnival than an educational venue, at one point comparing it to a “Luna Park” amusement park (ibid, p. 51). Moreover, rather than simply reporting their content, the article consistently appraises the presentation and aesthetic quality of the various exhibits as if the Colonization Exhi-bition were a kind of art exhibition. The article’s very genre thereby subverts the dignified, public education character of the exposition intended by its organizers. Its judgments are not always flattering either – exhibits are often (but not al-

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ways) presented as unskillful [setsuretsu], shabby [iyashii] or as displaying “superficial knowledge” [sengakushiki] (ibid).

The article also provides an anecdotal in-dication of the diverse backgrounds of the ex-position’s Japanese spectators and the resulting possibility for alternative interpretations or mis-readings of exhibits. Although by 1912 Japanese leaders had made much progress towards creating a unified and homogenous nation-state, regional identities remained strong and both differenc-es between city-dwellers and Japanese from the countryside as well as class differences were ap-parent to all. Folksy behavior by “country bump-kins” was frequently lampooned by journalists (Fujitani, 1996, p. 222), including the author of the Chōsen oyobi manshū article. The author re-counts how he or she overheard a conversation between a “country gentleman” [denshin] and his wife as they peered at an exhibit that happened to be in a black display case. The fairgoer was ex-plaining to his wife that the display case had been painted black because of the mourning period of the Meiji Emperor (who had died several months earlier). The author of the article “couldn’t help but burst out laughing” at this misunderstanding (Tokumei-shi, 1912, p. 52). From the point of view of audience reception, this comical example shows that meaning could be read into different aspects of the exposition in ways never intended by its planners. In this particular case, it seems that the “country gentleman” and his wife read imperial dignity into the color of a display case, whereas the anonymous Seoul journalist under-mined this aura through his or her disparagement of exhibit quality and mockery of the ruralites’ misplaced respect.

Contested Human ExhibitsStarting in the mid-nineteenth century, a new method of displaying national power became a constant fixture at expositions: human exhib-its of “inferior” ethnic groups, usually from the exhibiting country’s colonies. This colonial twist

to the exposition genre was enormously popu-lar; droves of residents of the imperial metropole eagerly lined up to catch a glimpse of “exotic” peoples who were displayed much like zoo ani-mals. Human exhibitions were initially justified by their “scientific” and “educational” value and were often organized by anthropologists or other scholars but increasingly became overtly commer-cialized spectacles (Matsuda, 2013, p. 142). The very practice of individuals from the colonizing country “speaking for” or representing the cul-ture or lifestyle colonized for their own ends is itself deeply problematic, but forcing individuals from “exotic” colonized groups to live for several months in the constant gaze of gaping crowds in a pre-determined “traditional” setting was an espe-cially flagrant kind of epistemic violence.

Within the fairgrounds of the Colonization Exposition, human exhibits were in many ways the centerpiece of the show. In the central court-yard of the main exhibition hall, a “native village” [dojin buraku] of “traditional” dwellings was set up as the background for a multi-ethnic exhibit of Japan’s different colonized subjects. The village featured Taiwanese of Chinese stock, Taiwanese aboriginals, Ainu, and Orok and Nivkh people from Karafuto. Most of these people came in families and were intended to be observed living their “traditional” daily life, but there were also some craftsmen that could demonstrate “tradi-tional” craft production to visitors (Matsuda, 2013, p. 135).

Their popularity notwithstanding, it is dif-ficult to make any general statements about at-titudes towards human exhibits in turn-of-the-century Japan. Although they were the focus of the 1912 exposition’s advertising campaigns and occupied a central place on the fairgrounds (Mat-suda, 2013, p. 138-39), the Chōsen oyobi manshū article only mentions them in passing, devoting far more attention to specific categories of craft exhibits (Tokumei-shi, 1912, p. 51). Unfortu-nately, I have been unable to find evidence of debates over the human zoo at the Colonization

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Exposition, but such exhibits had been highly controversial and drawn vociferous protests in Osaka only nine years previously. At that time, a number of Japanese proponents of colonial as-similation argued that the residents of Japan’s new overseas territories were already “Japanese” and it was therefore demeaning and unpatriotic to put them on display (Ziomek, 2014, p. 508). At the Osaka exposition and on several other occasions, the inclusion of Okinawans drew the greatest crit-icism, because these were widely considered to be fully assimilated “Japanese”, but there were even certain groups of Japanese who felt that Koreans and Taiwanese were too “civilized” or “Japanese” to be subject to such indignities (Matsuda, 2013,

p. 123-24). Only two years before the opening of the Colonization Exposition, at the Japan-Brit-ish Exhibition held in London in 1910, journal-ist Hasegawa Nyozekan “viewed the showing of the Ainus and aborigines of Taiwan, with visitors looking at these people as if they were rare an-imals in a zoo, as matters of humanitarian and moral concern” (Hotta-Lister, 1999, p. 145-146). The colonial processes of othering and exotici-zation employed at the Colonization Exposition were therefore not uncontested, even if they be-came a key feature of Japanese expositions for a time. Although the Chōsen oyobi manshū article provides no evidence on this point, it seems un-likely that opposition to human exhibits would

Figure 2: Ainu from Karafuto on display at the Colonization Exposition. Source: Meiji Kinenkai. (1912). Takushoku hakurankai kinen shashinchō. Tokyo: Meiji Kinenkai. In National Diet Library, Dig-ital Library from the Meiji Era. Retrieved from http://kindai.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/904743.

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have disappeared only a few years later in 1912, again demonstrating the importance of recogniz-ing the interpretive agency of individual audience members. In short, more evidence is necessary to gauge popular sentiments about the 1912 human exhibits, but judging from contemporaneous pro-tests to similar human zoos, public opinion was almost certainly divided about the desirability of displaying Japanese colonial subjects in this way, at least when it came to certain geographical or ethnic groups.

ConclusionAs this essay has demonstrated, one cannot un-problematically assume that Japanese visitors to the Colonization Exposition left with exactly the “colonial consciousness” the organizers hoped to impart. In general, an analysis of official primary sources for expositions such as exhibition cata-logues needs to be supplemented by sources such as the magazine article treated above in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the events’ impact. Sources like this cannot provide an accurate account of popular sentiments, but nevertheless give some indication of the diversity of possible interpretations of the exhibits, ranging from wholesale acceptance to condemnation.

There is a tendency in English-language lit-erature to overestimate the extent of Japanese pre-war indoctrination. As Takashi Fujitani (1996, p. 200-201) has presciently warned, “On the one hand, we must avoid a Durkheimian tendency to assume that [...] invented traditions and beliefs are necessarily and unproblematically accepted. On the other hand, we must guard against a de-sire to deny the impact and hold over the Japanese people of a whole host of symbols, beliefs, and practices” promoted by the Meiji state including colonial pageantry. This essay has suggested that the themes of colonial grandeur and dignity pro-moted by the organizers of the Colonization Ex-position were undermined in various ways or sub-ject to heterodox interpretations by some visitors.

The crush of visitors, the presence of food venders hawking their wares and other factors created a carnival atmosphere quite unlike that of a staid public museum. The low quality of certain ex-hibits seems to have drawn some visitor criticism, and the questionable morality of the human zoo almost certainly also did so. Nevertheless, even for sceptics, the Colonization Exposition still might have served the perhaps unintended func-tion of naturalizing the Empire. The very lack of solemnity surrounding the exposition’s imperial themes, which served as a background to student projects or sideshows, may well have subtly con-tributed to gradual naturalizing the idea of Japan as a colonial empire, of which Korean schools and Taiwanese exports were just as much a part as their metropolitan counterparts. In any case, this short essay has demonstrated that the early 20th century Japanese public’s views of imperial-ism were both diverse and complex and deserve further investigation.

JoHn Hennessey is a Doctoral student in His-tory at Linnaeus University where he is affiliat-ed with the Centre for Concurrences in Colo-nial and Postcolonial Studies and the Swedish National Graduate School of History. His pri-mary areas of interest include 19th and 20th century imperialism, Japanese history, dis-course analysis, nationalism and propaganda. Email: john.hennessey@lnu.se

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25 Asia In Focus

The world’s population is on the rise: while the Earth currently holds 7.3 bil-lion people, it is expected that this num-ber will increase to 9.5 billion by 2050

(UNDESA, 2013). The world is getting more ur-banized, both absolutely and relatively; the urban population recently exceeded the rural popula-tion for the first time in history. As an outcome the world’s landscape is increasingly occupied with more and larger cities, inducing deep changes in the spatial realm. Accordingly, the combined chal-lenges of accommodating the high pressures of eco-nomic and population growth and urbanization pose serious challenges to urban planners. Failure often results in considerable social and environ-mental costs, such as air and water pollution, traf-fic congestion, and the loss of green spaces. As this essay will demonstrate, agriculture in high-density environments make a contribution to making cit-ies more sustainable and preserving green spaces.

This essay uses Bang Krachao, one of the largest green areas in the direct proximity of Bang-kok, as a case study. The study is based on prima-ry data collected through interviews with experts, local officers and scholars, semi-structured inter-

views and a group interview conducted with farm-ers in Bang Krachao, as well as site observations. A SWOT-analysis is employed to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Bang Krachao’s agricultural sector. The SWOT - an abbreviation for Strengths, Weaknesses, Op-portunities and Strengths - is widely used as a tool for planning purposes (Helms & Nixon, 2010). Weihrich (1999) modified the SWOT into the format of a matrix, matching the internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) with its external factors (opportunities and threats) to generate strategies. In accordance with the results of the analysis, cor-responding initiatives are suggested with the aim to (i) enhance Bang Krachao’s agricultural sector, and (ii) help to preserve the remaining green areas against the backdrop of Bangkok’s urbanization.

Bangkok’s green lungEver since Bangkok became a capital city, the

city and surrounding areas have evolved as Thai-land’s center of urban growth. Industrial growth accelerated during the post-war period and accor-

Preserving Bang Krachao’s Green Space through Agriculture

Kees Krul

Urban sprawl brings about considerable changes in the peripheral areas of the city. Rich in many vegetation types, mangrove forests, and agricultural plots, Bang Krachao is one of the largest remaining green areas in the proximity of Bangkok. This area is currently under threat as Bangkok’s urban sprawl has not gone without effect in Bang Krachao: green areas are diminishing due to an increased developmental interest in the area together with a growing number of residents. This essay examines the role of the agricultural sector in persevering the remaining green spaces by employing a SWOT-analysis. Findings show that despite a number of weaknesses and threats, there are several important opportunities the sector can capitalize on. Corresponding initiatives are suggested that help to preserve the remaining green spaces and at the same time enhance Bang Krachao’s agriculture sector. Without new initiatives to reverse urban sprawl, it is likely that the ‘green lung of Bangkok’ will be filled with more concrete and asphalt.

Keywords: Urban Agriculture, Bangkok, Urbanization, Green Spaces, Bang Krachao, SWOT

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dingly Bangkok attracted a large wave of rural and foreign migrants. The pressure in the inner city increased and resulted in soaring land prices, ex-acerbating pollution and heavy traffic congestion, which motivated a geographical drift into Bang-kok’s periphery (Thaitakoo & McGrath, 2009).

Bang Krachao, administered in the Phra Pradeang district, is a peripheral area of Bangkok and has become one of the last-standing large-scale green areas in Bangkok today (Figure 1).

Rich in many vegetation types, gardens, man-grove forests and agricultural fields, the area com-prises approximately 2000 hectares and is home to some 40,000 inhabitants. The ‘green lung of Bangkok’, as the area is often referred to, plays a key role in the city’s ecological and climate con-trol systems. Bang Krachao’s many trees for in-stance, provide a flow of fresh air into the dense city. Culturally, Bang Krachao is rich in its cul-tural heritage, traditional lifestyles, and combined

Figure 1. An aerial view of Bangkok and Bang Krachao, which is sometimes referred to as a ‘pig stom-ach’ or ‘green lung’ (used by permission, © 2015 Esri, DigitalGlobe, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, GeoEye, USDA FSA, USGS, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community)

with its high variety of wildlife and biodiversity, the area makes for a unique and highly valuable part of the city (Figure 2).

Agriculture in Bang Krachao remains an important source of income in the area, and is widely practiced by some 800 households over an area of about 400 hectares (Sommeechai, 2012). It is mostly practiced by small-scale farmers who work on plots no larger than one hectare. The ag-riculture of Bang Krachao includes fruit orchards,

decorative plants, or a mixed pattern of agricul-tural practices with fish and frog ponds, for exam-ple. The three most commonly cultivated fruits are mango, coconut and banana, while a large number of ornamental plants are also grown on the peninsula.

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Preserving Bang Krachao’s Green Space through Agriculture

The urban threatBangkok’s continuous urban sprawl and infra-structural improvements have not gone without effect in Bang Krachao. Statistics show that ur-ban settlements are increasingly emerging in the area: while the percentage of green areas was 85 percent in 1990, it had declined to 73 percent in 2001. Simultaneously, the percentage land area classified as urban or construction areas have in-creased from 11 to 24 percent during the same period (Plake, 2011). The number of residents is also rising, witnessed by an increase from 33,475 inhabitants in 1991 to 39,450 inhabitants in 2009 (ibid). While more residential areas are be-ing constructed (Figure 3), the arrival of new res-idents, automobiles, and industrial sites in Bang-kok and Bang Krachao have caused more waste

and pollution which degrades the quality of land, air and water. Bangkok’s main river for instance, the Chao Praya river, circumnavigates around Bang Krachao and determines much of the wa-ter quality in the area. Farmers argue that large industrial ships and industrial sites along the river have increasingly polluted the river. Pollution of this kind is especially alarming for food produc-tion, as it can contaminate cultivated food (Birley & Lock, 1999).

Bangkok’s urban planning system remains largely ineffective in controlling urban sprawl as an outcome of decentralization, government downsizing and an overlap in planning authori-ties (Ratanawaraha, 2010). Planning authorities lack the staff and budget to effectively reinforce and monitor new developments in Bang Kra-chao (ibid). Other commenters have argued that

Figure 2. Traditional architecture in Bang Krachao (Source: the author)

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national development plans have traditionally focused on maximum economic benefits while ignoring the importance of green spaces ((Kul-risombat & Siri, 2009) . Even though there are specific construction regulations in Bang Krachao that aim to restrict new developments from tak-ing place, respondents argue that these are not always enforced by the local officials in charge. Another argument is that Bang Krachao is rela-tively unknown among the residents and tourists of Bangkok (Lambregts et al., 2011). This means that the loss of Bang Krachao’s green spaces goes largely unnoticed and there is little public sup-port for the preservation of the area.

A look at Bang Krachao’s agricultural sectorBang Krachao’s agricultural sector is characterized by a motivated and committed group of farmers. This study finds an exceptionally high job ap-preciation from the farmers, with some claiming that farming is “the best job in the world”. They also demonstrate a shared concern about urban sprawl in the area, and have staged their own in-itiatives to strengthen the sector and preserve the remaining green spaces. A related strength is the products of the farmers, which have been recog-nized for their high quality and excellent taste. Al-though Bang Krachao’s environmental conditions

Figure 3 Bang Krachao has become a popular retreat for wealthy Bangkokians during the weekends (Source: the author)

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make it challenging to grow certain crops, farm-ers claim that it is exactly these conditions which contribute to the distinct taste of their fruits. It also should be noted here that most farmers ex-clusively use organic fertilizers, instead of chem-icals, which makes products from Bang Krachao largely chemical-free and organic. Another related strength is the high market potential, as farmers indicate that there is plenty of demand for their products (Figure 4). Besides Bang Krachao’s own popular ‘floating market’, the proximity to Bang-kok also offers a huge market potential.

Several weaknesses of Bang Krachao’s agri-cultural sector can be identified as well. Perhaps the most striking weakness is that there is no re-

newed interest in the farming occupation from the young generation. Farmers claim that the youth find agriculture too physically demanding or simply too dirty, and instead prefer the modern city life on offer just across the Chao Praya river. This raises demographic issues as well, as most farmers are already over 50 years old. One coco-nut farmer argued that he was no longer able to meet all the physical requirements of his occupa-tion, such as climbing the ladder to collect fruits. Farmers are furthermore found to be ill-organized and communicate poorly much amongst them-selves, while NGO’s, governmental and extension services remain largely absent. Another weakness is that most farmers do not possess land, but lease

Figure 4 Farmers preparing products for retail (Source: the author)

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it from a landholder. As land prices have gone up over the years, it has become more lucrative to sell the land for development purposes instead of using it for farming purposes. Land insecurity is a further issue because farmers often have no formal long-term agreements, and are therefore disincentivized to make the necessary long-term investments on their land. Site observations as il-lustrated in Figure 5 show many speculative plots in Bang Krachao that have been abandoned and are awaiting to be sold to developers.

Continuous urban sprawl in and around Bang Krachao has resulted in the environmental degradation of land, water and air, further weak-

ening the agricultural sector. This is in addition to problems that arise from changing climatic conditions that affect Bang Krachao, for instance dying plants as a result of high temperatures and overexposure to sunlight. Despite the many weaknesses found in Bang Krachao’s agricultural sector, the next section shows that there are also many opportunities that can help to improve the sector and preserve Bang Krachao’s green space.

Opportunities for Bang Krachao’s agri-cultureGlobal environmental concerns are growing, and

Figure 5 Abandoned and speculative plots (Source: the author)

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such concerns are reflected in city planning. Ur-ban agriculture can constitute an important con-tribution in making cities more green, sustaina-ble, and resilient to changing climatic conditions. Bang Krachao for instance, helps to mitigate Bangkok’s urban heat island effect (Lambregts et al., 2011). In both the national plans of Thailand and city plans of Bangkok, environmental issues have become a priority in recent years (NESDP, 2011). It is unfortunate that given Bangkok’s weak urban planning system, these intentions continue to remain largely notional (Boonprasirt, 1997). Nevertheless it underlines a concern by political actors at different levels, which can become an important opportunity for Bang Krachao.

Opportunities are also present in the agri-cultural sector. Sustainable and organic agricul-ture have been promoted in recent years, together with initiatives that aim to increase productivi-ty yields (Rattanasuteerakul, 2010). The ‘1 rai 100,000 baht’ initiative for example, aims to cre-ate a revenue of 100,000 baht per 1 rai (about 3,000 USD per 16 hectares). King Bhumibol’s philosophy of a ‘sufficiency economy’, which has already been promoted by an agricultural learn-ing center in Bang Krachao, is another initiative that stimulates agriculture (Kasem and Thapa, 2012). ‘One Tambon One Product’ (OTOP), a programme that supports the local products of each Thai sub-district, has also been implement-ed in each of Bang Krachao’s six sub-districts. These examples show that the agricultural sector in the Thai context is dynamic and open to new initiatives.

The uniqueness of the area can also be con-sidered an opportunity. The area is often referred as ‘the green lung of Bangkok’, ‘the best urban oasis of Asia’, or as a ‘green paradise’ (see Mar-shall, 2006). The area has received royal attention from Thailand’s king in 1977, and by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who, in 2006, gave a royal recommendation for the conservation and development of the area (Sommeechia, 2012). These events have confirmed Bang Krachao’s

unique and green character and in turn led to a stricter planning and building code and enhanced the awareness and appreciation of the area.

InitiativesThe current situation of the agriculture in Bang Krachao can be summarized as critical but si-multaneously full of strengths and opportunities. Following the findings from the SWOT analy-sis above, I suggest two strategies that aim to enhance the sector and preserve Bang Krachao’s green spaces at the same time.

Diversification of agricultural activities recognizes the different roles and functions that agriculture can offer. The proximity to Bang-kok, which in the analysis is interpreted as both a threat and opportunity, plays a key role: over ten million Bangkokians and a large number of tourists make a vast group of potential visitors to the area. Bang Krachao’s agricultural sector can diversify from merely food production to other functions such as tourism, recreation and educa-tion. A sleeping-on-the-farm initiative, farmer’s markets, or educational seminars are common examples among urban agriculture initiatives, which have also been suggested for Bang Kra-chao (Lambregts et al., 2011; Plake, 2011). Bang Krachao’s floating market, which sells local prod-ucts, as well as various homestay programs have already tapped into some of these opportunities. Income diversification can make the agricultural sector more resilient especially in periods when the sector is hit by natural adversity or market fluctuations. Orientating services towards the general public will also result in more awareness of Bang Krachao and could spark a renewed in-terest in agriculture, something that is needed to preserve the green areas.

A second initiative is to create a special la-bel for Bang Krachao’s agricultural products. Like other similar labels for food, the producers receive benefits such as improved income, eco-nomic stability, diversification of income, and

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access to new markets (Nelson & Pound, 2009). The farmers can capitalize on the organic nature and high quality of their products, and distribute these throughout Bangkok. Moreover, the label will act as an enticement for people to visit the area and its farms, while also gaining public sup-port for preservation. With a diversification of ag-ricultural activities and a Bang Krachao label, the sector can in turn become more vital by offering prospects for younger generations.

Agriculture in Bang Krachao: A critical but promising futureGiven that Bangkok’s urbanization continues to enter into Bang Krachao’s green realm, without new initiatives it is likely that the ‘green lung of Bangkok’ will be filled with more concrete and as-phalt. This is something that ultimately will ame-liorate Bang Krachao’s function as a major green space and thus its unique character. This study has indicated that although urbanization poses the greatest threat to Bang Krachao’s green domain, the proximity to the city is paradoxically the ar-ea’s source of potential opportunity. Through the injection of new initiatives, Bangkok’s many cit-izens and tourists need to become more engaged with Bang Krachao’s agricultural sector. A healthy interaction stimulated through visits or the sell-ing of local products can prompt the much need-ed public awareness to preserve the area, whilst concurrently enhancing the agricultural sector. A revived and more resilient agricultural sector will then bring some fresh air into Bangkok’s green lung.

Kees Krul recently graduated with a Master Asian Studies from the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University. His primary areas of interest are food security and agriculture and he is currently in Beijing studying Chinese. Email krul.kees@gmail.com

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35 Asia In Focus

Largely unnoticed by the global public, 7 June 2014 marked the beginning of a rapid mass exodus of Cambodians from Thailand back to their home country:

within three weeks, approximately 250,000 Cam-bodian migrant workers returned to Cambodia (Finch, 2014). Taking all actors involved by sur-prise, the Cambodian government sent numerous army trucks and other vehicles to transport the re-turnees back to their homes while NGOs provid-ed humanitarian assistance at the chaotic border crossings (The Cambodia Herald, 2014; The Econ-omist, 2014, para. 2).

Although a major event in Thai-Cambodian bilateral relations in 2014, until now academics have abstained from exploring the background of the exodus. Therefore, this essay seeks to examine to what extent the Thai military junta might have caused the exodus. Specifically, causing the exodus may have been grounded in the larger political goals of the junta – possibly both national and in-

ternational ones. In this paper, I first briefly analyze Thai inter-

nal politics and the 2014 coup. I then explicate the situation of Cambodian migrant workers in Thai-land. Lastly, I review several potential rationales for the Thai junta’s behavior in order to pinpoint the exodus inside a broader picture.

Thai politics in the 2000sThe exodus began roughly three weeks after the Thai military had staged their latest coup d’état in a country “polarized between [former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s] supporters and opponents” (Liow & Gamage, 2014, p. 13). The traditional elite in Bangkok, which consists of “the military, the monarchy, and the bureaucracy” (Chachaval-pongpun, 2010, p. 335), had perceived their inter-ests and power as threatened and took down Thak-sin by military coup in 2006 (Chachavalpongpun,

Agenda or Accident?Unraveling the 2014 Mass Exodus of Cambodian Migrant Workers

from Thailand

Erich Molz

In May 2014, Thailand saw its latest military coup d’état overthrow an elected government. Shortly after, approximately 250,000 Cambodian migrant workers fled from Thailand into their home country. In this essay, I examine possible rationales for the Thai military junta’s apparent cause of the mass exodus, by reviewing academic and media accounts and discussing them in light of actual Thai and Cambodian state behavior. I argue that the Thai junta attempted to consolidate its power among the Thai security forces themselves, on the one hand, and to fight human trafficking in order to improve Thailand’s fading international reputation on the other. The military junta had not foreseen the dramatic consequences of the announcement to arrest any illegal migrant workers and the few raids conducted by military personnel. However, in retrospect, the exodus proved very useful for the junta as it was able to turn previously irregular Cambodian migrant workers into a vast cheap legal workforce. As such, the military junta weakened the rivaling police force that had benefitted from the trafficking business and threatened the military’s power. The political divide in Thai society underlying this rivalry remains, nonetheless, unresolved.

Keywords: Thailand, Cambodia, labor migration, military coup d’état, politics of migration, Thaksin Shinawatra

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2010, p. 339; Stout, 2014). However, this hardly contributed to the reconciliation of the “mostly rural, often poor, supporters of Mr Thaksin, and [the] urban middle class” (BBC News, 2014) on the ground, also known as the Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts. On the contrary, the coup plotters could not “prevent the re-emergence of a power-ful and threatening government” (Pathmanand, 2008, p. 139) for in 2011, Thaksins’s sister Yin-gluck Shinawatra was elected Prime Minister in an “overwhelming victory” (Farrelly, 2013, p. 289).

The Yellow Shirts finally saw self-exiled Thak-sin’s continuing influence on Thai politics proven when the House of Representatives supported a bill in late 2013 that “would among other things, absolve […] Thaksin […] of corruption charges against him” (Liow & Gamage, 2014, p. 12) and allow him to return to Thailand without fearing arrest. Although the bill was eventually refused by the Senate unanimously (BBC News, 2013), at times fatal mass demonstrations by both Yellow and Red Shirts continued and quickly focused on the legitimacy of the government itself (Liow & Gamage, 2014, p. 13). After months of polit-ical deadlock, street protests and the prospects of snap elections in July 2014 which were expected to keep her in power (Wade, 2014, para. 12), on May 7th a “court ruling removed […] Yingluck from her position as prime minister” (BBC News, 2014). On May 22nd, the military seized control of government functions, declared martial law and suspended the constitution (BBC News, 2014; Wade, 2014), officially “in the interest of rule and order” (Campbell, 2014) but supposedly “to reverse the political trend towards democracy in Thailand back to royal political dominance” (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 171).

On June 6th then, Thai army spokeswoman Sirichan Ngathong announced that “any illegal migrant workers found in Thailand ‘will be arrest-ed and deported’” and added that Thai authori-ties “see illegal workers as a threat because there were a lot of them and no clear measures to han-

dle them, which could lead to social problems” (The Standard, 2014). Although the junta re-peatedly denied crackdowns on migrant workers and called them rumors, reports of violent arrests quickly spread among Cambodians inside and outside of Thailand (Kijchalong, 2014; Wallace & Saing, 2014, para. 16). By June 25th, an esti-mated 250,000 Cambodian migrant workers had returned to their home country, mainly through official border crossings (Finch, 2014).

Labor migration between Thailand and CambodiaIn early 2014, an estimated 180,000 Cambo-dians were working in Thailand illegally (Pro-myamyai, 2014, para. 3). Additionally, after the Thai government “opened a registration window for irregular migrants” (Tunon & Rim, 2013, pp. 4-5), approximately 250,000 Cambodians had acquired legal status by 2012, which is consistent with an International Labour Organization (ILO) estimate of around 438,000 Cambodians in Thai-land in total (Park, 2014, Chatter sparks fear, para. 5). Cambodian migrant workers are most often employed in construction, agriculture and fisheries (Hing & Lun, 2011, p. 2) with working conditions being “dirty, difficult and dangerous” (Chan, 2008, p. 2), and even though their wag-es are often below the Thai minimum wage, they are still considerably higher than in Cambodia (Tunon & Rim, 2013, p. 7; see Tolson, 2014, for interview reports). Both Pongsudhirak (2014, Follow the River, para. 4) and Human Rights Watch (2010, p. 20) agree that the absence of migrant workers from neighboring countries on Thai soil would create significant troubles for its economy.

Several studies revealed how prone Cambo-dian migrant workers, both legal and illegal, were to exploitation (Hing & Lun, 2011, p. 4; Human Rights Watch, 2010, p. 1). Given this situation, policy advice by the ILO (Pearson, 2006), Hu-man Rights Watch (2010) and the International

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Organization for Migration (Huguet & Chamra-trithirong, 2011) was readily available to Thai au-thorities. Moreover, ever since 1997 a broad civil society coalition “ha[d] focused on the personal legal status and rights of marginalized groups such as […] migrant workers” (Archavanitkul, 2014, pp. 192-193). Hence, the apparent help-lessness in dealing with illegal migrant workers expressed Ngathong’s announcement is not con-vincing, especially when recalling the importance of migrant workers for the Thai businesses. With this in mind, I will now examine several academic and media accounts on whether the Thai military junta has indeed caused the exodus and if so, why.

Power PoliticsGiven the dispute about Preah Vihear temple and the refusal of Thai military forces to withdraw from this particular border area (Pou, 2013, p. 90), one might think that the junta’s “crackdown” on and expulsion of Cambodian workers was a show of force towards the Cambodian leadership. It might even be an attempt at intimidation not to interfere with Thai interior politics (The Econ-omist, 2014, para. 4). For instance, Yingluck as well as Thaksin Shinawatra had very good rela-tions with Phnom Penh (Sok, 2014, p. 268-270), and several political figures apparently considered fleeing to Cambodia after the coup (Finch, 2014, para. 9-16). Thailand’s elite could have perceived a Cambodian preference for the Red Shirts. Hence, causing a mass reflux of people that poses significant challenges could have been a warning signal to Cambodian authorities to mind their own business. However, rumors about a Phnom Penh based Thai government in exile were ruled out by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen just days after the coup, long before Ngathong’s an-nouncement. In fact, he clarified that his govern-ment would “work hard to keep a normal rela-tionship with the Thais whether there is a civilian government or military government” (Khy, 2014, para. 6). And indeed, “on 31 May 2014, Cam-

bodia’s Deputy Prime Minister […] turned up in Thailand to offer his government’s support for the Thai coup” (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 181) and a high level Cambodian military delegation visited Thailand in July (Chongkittavorn, 2014, para. 9). Similarly, only five months later Hun Sen welcomed coup leader and new Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in Phnom Penh, upon which they signed three memoranda of un-derstanding (Khuon, 2014a). These events cer-tainly do not reflect a pro-Thaksin bias in Cam-bodia. Instead, as Chongkittavorn (2014, para 3) observes, “the state of Thai-Cambodian ties has largely depended on the rapport between leader-ships”. Hun Sen did not need any reminder from the Thai junta that the tables had turned. Rather, he sensed it himself and changed his affiliations accordingly for the sake of good bilateral relations (see also Ganjanakhundee, 2014). Thus, the Thai junta did not need to launch a severe bilateral cri-sis in the midst of internal turmoil at all – unless they had aimed for “unity.”

UnityChachavalpongpun (2010, p. 333) describes how the traditional elite in Bangkok are regular-ly evoking “unity” in apparent attempts to calm occurrences of serious unrest. In this regard, the severe divide between pro-Thaksin Red Shirts and elite-aligned Yellow Shirts during the last decade can obviously be seen as a situation where “national unity” might be called for. However, such discourse only serves the elite themselves as unity is usually synonymous with their interests (Chachavalpongpun, 2010, p. 339; Pathmanand, 2008, p. 133). It should not come as a surprise then that the Red Shirts are not expected to give up their demands for more participation on Thai-land’s political stage after Thaksin had significant-ly improved their economic situation (Chambers, 2013, p. 70; see also Walker, 2012; p. 222). A call for unity therefore would easily dissipate. Thus, it is possible that the junta had decided to utilize

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Thai resentments and feelings of superiority to-wards Cambodians (French, 2002, p. 462), based on the Preah Vihear temple and border dispute, or towards Burmese, representing the vast ma-jority of migrant workers (Park, 2014, Chatter sparks fear, para. 5), to create an external “Other” threatening Thai society. As Derks (2013, p.225) states, “while constituting the backbone of Thai-land’s low-cost, labour-intensive industries, the […] migrant workers in the country are seen at the same time as a threat to its social order, na-tional security and even to the health of its peo-ple”. This is consistent with a controversial public claim of a Yellow Shirt leader “that Cambodians were among Red Shirt ranks” (Finch, 2014, para. 23). Yet neither did Ngathong’s announcement constitute an inflammatory hate speech, nor was there abundant news on violent crackdowns on migrant workers. In fact, since the exodus pre-dictably impaired business interests in Thailand (The Economist, 2014, para. 5; THE NATION, 2014a), it rather created conflict within the Thai elite – probably not one of the junta’s goals unless migrant-employing businesses were for some rea-son more aligned with the Red Shirts. Addition-ally, there was hardly any news on crackdowns on Burmese migrant workers, let alone a similar exodus (Finch, 2014, para. 17-20). This incon-sistency is further evidence against the hypothe-sis of creating unity among Thais at the expense of Cambodian migrant workers. If anything, the junta’s violent operations “to annihilate [Red Shirt] networks” (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 173) in Thailand’s north brought the society fur-ther apart (see also Fenn, 2014).

Internal power struggleThough no accounts on political affiliations of Thai business owners could be found, evidence suggests that Thai police were indeed sympathetic towards the Red Shirts. Chambers (2013) recalls that “at times, Thaksin had given the Royal Thai Police more authority in areas traditionally re-

served for the military” (p. 72), while Yingluck, too, “has increasingly used police (considered to be more pro-Thaksin), rather than the military, for security objectives” (p. 76). In fact, Thaksin had tried to establish a network of well-disposed army leaders too, but was unsuccessful (Path-manand, 2008, p. 127-129). Instead, “the armed forces have remained more or less autonomous” (Chambers, 2014, p. 113) and the divide of Thai society had manifested itself in the security forces. McCargo (2006, p. 53) for instance notes “bitter turf wars over the control of smuggling and oth-er illegal activities” between police and the army. Furthermore, Hunt (2014, para. 5) reports “the Thai military was using [the exodus] to dismantle a powerbase that was forged around cheap and illegal labor, established and run by a rival institu-tion (the Thai police)”. If this holds true, then the limited crackdowns can be seen as an effort by the traditional elite to re-establish its old powers and undermine those of competitors from inside the state. Moreover, powerful armed forces in favor of Thaksin who are opposed to the largely Yellow Shirt-aligned military could increase the risk of a civil war in the future (cf. International Crisis Group, 2014). In contrast, with so many migrant workers having fled the country, the Thai junta could then establish its control over the returning migration flows: “they will be allowed to return (to Thailand) but only after the paperwork has been completed and their direction will be facil-itated by the Thai military” (Hunt, 2014, para. 7). In this sense, the exodus decisively helped the military junta in weakening the rivaling police and stabilizing their rule.

Thailand’s international relationsThe United States has been a major partner of Thailand ever since WWII, reflected especially in profound military cooperation and development assistance (Zebioli, 2009, pp. 8-9). Furthermore, “the USA and other foreign governments have played key roles in the legitimation [sic] and

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fortification of the royal family and its military backers” (Farrelly, 2013, p. 291). Thus, it certain-ly did not escape the junta’s attention that U.S. Secretary of State Kerry maintained there was “no justification for this military coup” (Wade, 2014, para. 3). Then came the “decision by the U.S. to downgrade Thailand to the lowest tier on human-trafficking – which had been expected [emphasis added]” (Finch, 2014, para. 29) dur-ing the exodus. Although this event might seem negligible, the consequences could be very costly: cuts in development aid, less foreign direct invest-ment, diplomatic pressure, and even economic sanctions were under discussion (Hodal, Kelly & Roberts, 2014, para. 14). In fact, Australia had postponed “bilateral military operations with Thailand” (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 175) already on May 31st. Given these prospects, the Thai junta could have decided to end illegal mi-gration in a broader attempt to curb human traf-ficking (Tolson, 2014, Rumours, para. 5). In fact, numerous so-called one-stop services have been opened throughout Thailand under the auspices of the military to allow registration in only half an hour (Preutiwarodom & Saengpassa, 2014, para. 3). Similarly, a couple of one-stop services at bor-der crossings have been set up to facilitate labor migration and allow for subsequent registration at the service points inside Thailand (Hul, 2014; Phorn, 2014). The junta has also called upon busi-nesses to “follow labour laws protecting migrant workers and treat them the same way Thai work-ers are treated” (THE NATION, 2014b, para. 1) and threatened employers with substantial fines if they failed to register their migrant workers (THE NATION, 2014c, para. 2). This clearly marks a shift from former times when authorities “tol-erate[d] the presence (and, in fact, the targeted recruitment) of extra-legal Cambodian migrant workers as long as they [did] not compete with Thais for jobs” (French, 2002, p. 434). Thus, it appears that “the coup makers have reacted with a great sense of nervousness” (Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 176) to the threat of international sanc-

tions. The exodus then provided a first opportu-nity to redeem themselves, at least with regard to human rights violations in Thailand. It should be noted that the United States and European Un-ion indeed imposed sanctions on the junta during the exodus (see Chachavalpongpun, 2014, p. 173-175), which is further evidence against the claim that the Thai junta caused the exodus deliberately.

ConclusionIn this essay, I was seeking to provide an exami-nation of different possible rationales for the Thai junta’s apparent crackdown on Cambodian mi-grant workers in June 2014, which caused a mass exodus of roughly 250,000 Cambodians within weeks. To this aim, I reviewed the academic lit-erature on contemporary Thai politics as well as analysts’ explanations in the media and discussed them in light of actual Thai and Cambodian state behavior. The four “hypotheses” examined were the show of force towards supposedly pro-Thak-sin Cambodian leaders; an attempt to unify the confronting Thai fractions by creating an external “Other” threat; a power struggle among the Thai security forces themselves; and a new endeavor to fight human trafficking in order to improve Thai-land’s fading international reputation.

In light of the relevant accounts, it seems the Thai military junta did not forsee the dramatic consequences of spokeswoman Ngathong’s an-nouncement to arrest any illegal migrant work-ers, coupled with the few raids conducted by se-curity personnel. Although the Thai authorities were known for frequent violent crackdowns on irregular migrants (Derks, 2013, p. 219), “most countries must balance their security concerns with their need for large numbers of labour mi-grants” (Mitchell, 2012, p. 7) and Thailand is no exception. Hence, the proposition that the junta intentionally impaired Thailand’s economy and international reputation (even further) appears unlikely. Instead, the exodus might have partly been the result of low opportunity costs associat-

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ed with leaving Thailand for Cambodian migrant workers (compared to Burmese) and fast-spread-ing, exaggerated rumors among Cambodian mi-grant networks (Finch, 2014, para. 21-27).

Yet, in retrospect, the exodus proved very useful for the Thai military as they were able to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, they turned irregular Cambodian migrant work-ers into a massive cheap legal workforce, some-thing former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had envisioned back in 2009 (Derks, 2013, p. 219); Khuon (2014b) reports over 650,000 legal Cam-bodian migrant workers on Thai soil today. In so doing, Thai authorities could finally prove their commitment to fighting human trafficking and to promoting human rights to the international community – albeit unsuccessfully (cf. U.S. De-partment of State, 2015, p. 54). On the other hand, they potentially weakened the rivaling po-lice force that had benefitted from the trafficking business and threatened the military’s power, as suggested by Hunt (2014, para. 5). Additionally, it is important to emphasize that the Thai junta did not intend to intimidate or punish the Cam-bodian leadership. Instead, the two governments managed to preserve positive bilateral relations, peace and security in the region, and thereby their own national security as well (Adamson, 2006, p. 180). Cambodians themselves have taken advan-tage of the chance of entering Thailand legally and making a good living for themselves and their families although it remains to be seen how sus-tainable the improvements will be (for contrast-ing views see Archavanitkul, 2014, p. 195, and Derks, 2013, p. 219). At the very least, the new Thai policies show that where there is a will, there is a way to solve pressing migration questions.

While the exodus can be regarded as a for-eign policy success in hindsight, the political deadlock in Thailand is a lot more difficult to resolve. Although they might have diminished Thaksin’s influence significantly and made his re-turn unlikelier, it is highly questionable wheth-er the traditional Thai elite are ready to endorse

democracy, as it threatens their societal predom-inance (see for example Hewison, 2014; Kuhon-ta & Sinpeng, 2014). Rather, it is likely that the divide between Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts will continue to linger underneath the regime’s sur-face.

ericH Molz is a Masters student of Peace, Me-diation & Conflict Research at the University of Tampere, Finland. His primary areas of in-terest include East and Southeast Asia, forgive-ness and reconciliation, and peace education. Email: Molz.Erich.X@student.uta.fi

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45 Asia In Focus

There is a strong tendency in both Asia and the Middle East for youth to engage in activism, and demand more demo-cratic-like conditions (Bowie, 2005; Ed-

monds & Ho, 2008). This article provides a My-anmar perspective on the matter. Many within the international media are questioning to what extent the country is in fact becoming a more free socie-ty. Nonetheless, it is argued among scholars that new possibilities to engage in political work have occurred since the military junta initiated a move away from dictatorship towards democratic-like reforms in 2010 (Gravers & Ytzen, 2014). We are witnessing a transition period, where politicians, mainly from the opposition parties, and civil soci-ety question the norms of the past six decades that have dictated submission and obedience. However, the habit of compliance will not change overnight. For decades, the regime has managed to fright-en the population into not daring to speak their minds through the use of violence, lack of educa-tion, poverty, discrimination and armed conflict (Fink, 2009 [2001]). Yet international non-gov-ernmental organizations, INGOs, can now legally offer training on activism that prepares people to utilize the increased freedom to speak and act in

public, which has gradually been permitted by the government under President U Thein Sein.

We wish to give the reader an understanding of why and how young people in Myanmar engage in activism. We find this to be of relevance as in the history of Myanmar, youth have played a cen-tral role when it comes to social change at several events. Initiating resistance towards the dictator-ship, the youth have helped in altering the mental-ity of the population during the student uprisings in 1988 and the Saffron Revolution in 2007 (Grav-ers & Ytzen, 2014). Despite the military strategy of controlling the younger generation through an inadequate educational system it was a group of young students who initiated the national upris-ings of August 8, 1988. Before this historical day when the students went to the streets and where thousands were killed in Yangon alone, students at the Yangon University initiated several demon-strations, demanding the possibility to establish student unions that could work for their interests (Gravers & Ytzen, 2014, p. 50-51). As the situa-tion developed, the students started criticizing the authority of the regime (Fink, 2009 p. 47).

Myanmar Activists in the MakingNavigating in a Changing Political Landscape

Sara Ellegaard Nielsen & Camilla Jane Standhart

Based on four months of anthropological fieldwork this article contributes to an understanding of the lives of Myanmar youth activists. The aim is to portray how this particular group of youth differs in their motivations and activist practices from previous generations. In taking action, the youth of our research draw on capacities for building individual knowledge and skills acquired during training provided by an INGO (international non-governmental organization). Through the theoretical concept of the trickster, we argue that these youths embody an ambiguous and mediating role when engaging in activism. We show how the youth navigate and challenge the social and cultural norms of present society. They do this by negotiating and bridging ideas of democracy and human rights to their communities in such a way that the ideas become socially accepted and translated into a local context. These youth do not want another revolution. They want profound development and consolidation.

Keywords: Activism, change, Myanmar, trickster, youth

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In this article, we look at how the young people in present-day Myanmar may differ from the politically active youth of the past in their rea-sons for engaging in activism. Our research shows that these youth do not want another revolution like that of 1988 but hope instead to contribute to a steady and permanent democratization of Myanmar.

Research Design This article is based on empirical material collect-ed during fieldwork conducted in Myanmar from January to May 2014. In order to get access to the field, we collaborated with an INGO training hub situated in Yangon. By attending a reunion for former participants, we got in contact with 23 young people. Our interlocutors defined them-selves as youth. They were all between 20 and 33 years of age. During the INGO training, they were addressed as youth. Furthermore, as a result of their specific social and political work, they of-ten had no stable economic situation or a fam-ily of their own, which, according to Myanmar customs, withheld them culturally from entering adulthood. As we have chosen to make use of this definition in our analysis, youth is to be seen as both an emic and etic term. Karen Tranberg Hansen (2008) argues that youth inhabit more agency than children and, like adults, have more responsibilities than adolescents (Hansen, 2008, p. 8-9). Based on comparative research among youth in Brazil, Vietnam, and Zambia, Hansen argues that the youth category is a social and cul-tural construction that differs in form and mean-ing depending on the situation (Hansen, 2008, p. 209).

The young people were engaged in different projects in a multitude of places with different groups of people. They had their connection to the INGO where they had attended a particu-lar training session on activism in common. The projects of our interlocutors include among oth-ers organizing workshops for farmers about land

rights and teaching both adults and youth about health and human rights.

We carried out participant observation by watching the youth in action and we met with their families, friends, and colleagues. Apart from carrying out fieldwork in Yangon where two thirds of our interlocutors lived, we went to cities and rural villages in the Mon, Kayah, and Shan States, the Magway Division and the Delta Region. In order to achieve a more profound understanding of their motivations and practices, we conducted recorded interviews with all 23 interlocutors. We asked about what their activist practice entailed, what their motivations to engage had been, what challenges they faced in their daily work, and what dreams they had for the future.

Activism in MyanmarThe use of the concept of activism in Myanmar shows how the country has changed politically. Practicing activism was banned both in speech and in action during the military rule, but when INGOs started entering the country in the after-math of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, people started to use the English term activist in public (Petrie & South, 2014, p. 232). During our time at the INGO, trainers and participants referred to themselves as activists. However, once we left the training hub, where the youth received training in governance, human rights and democratic ide-as, this was no longer the case. When following our interlocutors in their local communities, they would not translate the English term of an activ-ist into their ethnic language to describe them-selves. They told us how they instead applied the meaning of the English definition of a social and community worker. They argued that the activist word was still too controversial to most villagers. Nonetheless, when asked about it, the youth would define most of their work as being activist in character. As 24-year old Aye, who was spreading knowledge about reproductive health among young people in the rural South, told us,

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“An activist is the person who does the things that people do not dare to do. They are active in doing something good. I used it when I attended the training but I do not use it in my work as it is forbidden to do”.

Too many negative connotations are still at-tached to the activist concept, especially among people older than our interlocutors, as they con-tinue to be affected by the aggressive propaganda that was exercised by the military over half a cen-tury. To them, being an activist is dangerous and associated with risk, imprisonment and fear. Up until 2010, expressing your opinion in public was condemned, criminalized, and brutally punished (Fink, 2009). Our interlocutors wish to express their points of views even though activism is still a highly political word. What motivates them to take action is the strong emotions that originate from their experiences with injustice and viola-tions of human rights during the military rule. This echoes other research on how taking action correlates with the awakening of indignation within a person (Beyerlein & Ward, 2007, p. 1; Hodgeson & Brooks, 2007, p. 18).

Through the INGO training the youth in our research have become more articulate about the activist qualities of their work, yet they do not label their daily activities as activism. Our inter-locutors had no problem applying words such as “capacity building” or “campaign strategy” when explaining their work to us. However, when Ht-way, a 24-year-old man living in Yangon and or-ganizing strikes, told factory workers about their rights, he would adapt and translate words like these into words that the factory workers could relate to. This highlights how the youth navi-gate surroundings that are not necessarily ready to embrace and make use of activist vocabulary. We argue that the aforementioned English terms provided during training become the activist lan-guage of the youth when they are with their peers or sharing their projects with outsiders, but it is not the language they use when interacting with their communities.

In the following we show that our interlocu-tors, at an interpersonal level, are contributing to the reshaping of the norms of family life and the norms of the kind of political activity that is so-cially accepted in Myanmar today. They are able to do this by belonging to the socially defined category ‘youth’, but also through their conscious choice to create change as activists.

Confronting Norms Bourdieu (1977) addresses what makes one group believe that a certain kind of practice is natural or possible, while another group finds it unthinkable or scandalous. He defines habitus as something practically and bodily induced which creates nat-uralized values through socialization (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 80). Habitus is a system of dispositions through which agents perceive, judge, and act in the world, and as such, it legitimizes and repro-duces the way things are. Bourdieu states that “the habitus, the product of history, produces in-dividual and collective practices” (ibid, p.82). In the following we will show how the practices of our interlocutors are influenced by the history of Myanmar.

Htway confronted the norms within the fam-ily sphere, which made the relationship with his parents rather tense. As he was working to improve the rights and working conditions of factory work-ers, he felt it necessary to confront his parents about their exploitation of child labor in their teashop:

“I have said to you that they don’t like my ethics because sometimes I am a little bit against the injustice […] For example, my family opens the cafeteria and the children have to work for a long time, not 8 hours but 15 or 14 hours, so I am against that. They think I destroy their profit, but it is not like that.”

By criticizing his parents, Htway broke with a strong tradition of respecting the decisions of elders and authorities in society (Fink, 2009, p.

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134). Due to the rule and practice of the recent military regime, the discussion of worker’s rights and the establishment of unions was something quite new to the public. Even though he was a front-runner in the fight for the rights of exploit-ed factory workers, he had not yet gained accept-ance or convinced his family about the logic and good intentions behind his work.

Aye, who is concerned with health issues, described how she was working in the space be-tween the very traditional ideas within her target communities and her desire to promote aware-ness among the younger generations:

“I am the one who lead the young people so I have to care a lot […] about my young peo-ple, my colleagues, my peers. I think I can share knowledge but I cannot make a big workshop or big change. We have a lot of gaps [in our society], and we don’t make any demonstrations or marching”.

According to Aye, for the time being demon-strations were not a constructive way to change people’s minds. She would rather create dialogue within communities and raise awareness by tak-ing a one-on-one approach and telling the young people how they were “holders of certain rights”. In doing so she implemented the human rights based approach (HRBA) that she had been taught during her training.

Htway and Aye tried to mediate ideas and knowledge between old and new styles of thoughts and habits. Their interaction with their surround-ings is an example of a clash between two sets of habitus that is produced by “different modes of generation” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 78). We see how they are both products, so to say, of the particu-lar history of Myanmar. By doing the training they create a window of possibilities where they have access to knowledge about human rights and the constitutional laws. Furthermore, they have learned how to facilitate workshops and raise awareness about their causes. As such the

habitual practices that guide their actions become different from that of their parent’s generation. The current time of transition in Myanmar so-ciety is providing a space where potential action can be facilitated. The youth and the communi-ties find themselves between the consequences of the military regime and the potentialities of the new governmental system that are currently being negotiated.

Levine (2011, p. 426-428) argues that youth in times of cultural transition come to act as in-termediaries and facilitators of change of culture. According to Levine, youth often indirectly and unintentionally end up introducing new habits to the people in their local communities when they return from urban educational centers. This may well apply to the youth of our research, but what characterizes them more is that they intentional-ly aim to create change in their role as not only youth, but as youth activists. As agents of change, the youths are breaking with the traditional pat-terns of behavior; they are breaking with the hab-itus of both their own and their parent’s genera-tion.

This leads us to the concept of the trickster, a historical and mythological phenomenon that in anthropological literature is presented as a figure with multiple characteristics (Brown, 1947; Ra-din, 1956; Pelton, 1980; Hyde, 2010[1998]). The paradoxical and ambiguous nature of the trickster relies on the fact that he/she is never fixed to a particular structure. Babcock-Abrahams (1975, p. 164) defines the trickster as “the embodiment of the contradictory power attendant upon the violation of fundamental taboos”. By violating taboos for the profit of his group, the trickster is a mediator who is both sacred and profane. This figure represents opposites and can thus be inter-preted in multiple ways – both as a trickster or outsider and as a cultural hero (Babcock-Abra-hams, 1975, p. 161). It is this ambiguous, never fixed, and mediating role, which our interlocutors inhabit. They are brought up in different villages, towards which they feel a strong sense of respon-

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sibility even though some of them no longer live in these villages. They attend training and are ed-ucated in Yangon where most of them only live temporarily. Consequently, our interlocutors felt as if they were constantly torn between rural and urban areas, traditions and new knowledge, and between being responsible community leaders and young activists.

The trickster helps us understand the com-plexity of the social role of our interlocutors as they confront the established norms and make long existing taboos visible. Examples include how Htway challenge social norms by confront-ing his parents about child rights and how Aye ad-dressed long held taboos when discussing health and sex with young people in very conservative rural villages. They are dialogical, as they are out-siders in the sense that they do not act according to the majority and they are cultural heroes as they lead the way and guide their communities. Furthermore, they make sure that the knowledge they have access to in the urban areas is transmit-ted to people in the rural areas.

The youths are thus molding the idea of what an activist is within the population by mov-ing away from the revolutionary approach prac-ticed by the youth during the uprisings of 1988 and 2007 and instead by working with knowledge sharing and consolidation. It is by adapting their activist role to the social situation of their time that they achieve a position from where they can challenge and change status quo. In approaching our interlocutors through the trickster figure, we are given a concept that embraces the specific role of our interlocutors as mediators, not only as be-ing youth or activists, but as those who challenge the norms of their society and who create a win-dow for change through their projects. They show their communities an alternative. Babcock-Abra-hams argues that one of the many functions of the trickster is that of being evaluative – of creating a space for reexamining the existing conditions, which can then lead to a possible change of things (Babcock-Abrahams, 1975, p. 183). This is what

Aye is doing when letting young women know that abortion is a possibility and what Htway is facilitating by arranging strikes with the factory workers. They are creating a space at a certain time and place where people are explicitly made aware of and invited to discuss and reflect upon the status quo.

Conclusion In this article, we have examined how youths in Myanmar engage in activism. Their actions are motivated by their personal experience with so-cial injustices. They have had access to INGO facilitated activist training, which has provid-ed them with the vocabulary and knowledge to address these injustices in a time of change. In applying their knowledge about social change to their local communities, these youths have to ad-just and navigate in the often very conservative social settings of their projects.

In embodying the trickster qualities by be-ing mediators as well as provocateurs, our inter-locutors are indirectly given the mandate by their surroundings to challenge the established norms and promote new ways of thinking without being excluded from their communities. This feature is what characterizes youth activism in Myanmar today. Applying the trickster concept to analyze the social position of our interlocutors is done deliberately as to indicate how these youth are not compliant to conformity. They want to con-tribute to a profound change and improvement of the socio-economic-political situation of their communities. As the trickster, they will continue to develop, change, and adapt their practices to achieve this goal.

50 Asia In Focus

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sArA ellegAArd nielsen graduated with a Mas-ters in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She is currently facilitating work-shops and giving lectures on the topic of Myanmar. Email sara_nielsen@hotmail.com

cAMillA JAne stAndHArt recently graduat-ed with a Masters in Anthropology from the Department of Anthropology at the Uni-versity of Copenhagen. She was selected for the Teach First Danmark graduate pro-gramme and is currently teaching at a school. Email camillastandhart@hotmail.com

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